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Friday, January 20, 2017

As the Donald is sworn in, the only real change is likely to be a curbing of the excess intel regime, a victory for the Total Information Awareness claque and a defeat of the cloak and dagger mischief makers. With those expensive, murderous, pointless, counterproductive rogue elements liquidated, what is left is the economy.

When the world’s two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and moulded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction.

If you watch Chomsky you'll note he is not about to be pinned down as to labels, but he is probably essentially an anarchist. He certainly defends socialism, to the point he criticized the Soviet Union for failing at socialism, and his criticism was in the form of comparison to the USA. Again, what I like about Marxists is they get their facts straight, and Chomsky sure gets his facts straight.

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist — surely any serious Marxist — should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism.

Now, as Trump is inauGREATed, the above could be edited thus, so perfectly matched is the Soviet Union and the USA in hypocrisy and corruption of ideals:

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the American State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in America in 1776 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the American ideal; an impossibility, as any free marketer — surely any serious liberal — should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the American regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of American ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of freedom.

In 1986 Chmosky noted the similarities. Nothing is changing. The real change coming is the continued disintegration and death is the ex nihilo credit regime. Who gets hurt and how at this point is mere aesthetics. It is what is is, the world can be a wicked place and that is good to know. You may pledge allegiance to all the hoopla, or you can get to work creating your own freedom. No matter what happens in Washington or Wall Street you can innovate and create customers, that is create your own peace and prosperity.

If you'd prefer to build a business than debate politics, there are links to online courses on the upper right of this blog, and a list of my upcoming seminars here...